[limpet chicken]

What methods exist for the reductive amination of ketones, without using hydride reducing agents or aluminium amalgam?

Would prodicing a mixture of the ketone, and the amine, and then passing H2S through the solution as the reducing agent work?

Or maybe using hydrazine with the ketone to bee reductively aminated.
Maybe even hydroquinone? AFAIK its a pretty piss-poor reducing agent, but its widely available, unlike the metal hydrides.

I would just use Hg amalgam, but the only sample of Hg I have is that from a whole load of thermometers, and as such, is going to stay as a sample, rather than a reagent  

[Mitch]

Hydrazine with a ketone won't work, check out the Wolff-Kishner reduction in the name reactions section.

[Donaldson Tan]

for a while, i thought i saw "reductive ANIMATION... "

 :roflmao: :roflmao:

[limpet chicken]

Mitch, I can't follow those diagrams of the wolff-kishner in name reactions, I havent seen things presented in that way before and I don't understand it at all, but thanks for pointing them out nonetheless.

Yeah geo, I read the term "reductive amination" very frequently, as I read the hive a great deal (talking of which, anyone know exactly when its back up? I am at a loss without Rhodium's site too) and often find myself reading it as animation, indeed I have had more than the one amusing experience when trying to talk about "animation" with friends, and  using the other term, I can't help but grin to myself when I realise what I wrote and they have no idea.

For reductive ANMIATION, alice in wonderland sounds like the right thing..."here eat this mushroom"  

[Mitch]

Basically the diagram will tell you that a ketone with hydrazine will lead to the substance no longer having an oxygen attached. I've notice an increase in Hive and Rhodium traffic. I believe they arrive here by typing something like "Where did the hive go?" into google.

[limpet chicken]

I actually realised hydrazine wouldn't work after quite a bit of seaching on google, but as for other methods of reductive amination, I really need to find something  

[Mr Amino]

Huh? why would you need elemental mercury?  Isnt a mercury salt easier to work with anyways?

[limpet chicken]

I actually asked the question meaning mercury or mercury compounds in general, but it doesn't really matter now as I found a photographic shop selling cheap mercury metal, I just didn't have a source cheaper than broken thermometers before, now I can order it 500 grams or so at a time

As far as elemental mercury goes, I usually buy it in that form, for storage and safety, and convenience reasons, and convert it to the compounds I need as and when I m going to be using them, its easier and probably safer to keep it in the form of a jar full of metal, than as a soluble salt